Menu

Todo Zero

What if I suggested that you finish each day with nothing left on your todo list? This is the only rule of Todo Zero.

You might find yourself biting back some choice words. This sounds like unhelpful advice from someone with a much simpler life than yours.

Not so fast. Picture a world-class juggler with half-a-dozen balls in motion. How many balls do they have in their hands at once? None, one, or two. Never more than two. The remainder are in the air.

By analogy, work on just one or two things at a time. The remainder can be scheduled for some time in the future. In this way, it’s very possible to finish what’s currently on your list.

Otherwise, all of the competing priorities of a long list clamour for your attention. They clutter one another, making it impossible to focus. When you’re pulled in many directions, you’ll end up immobilized and demotivated.

At least that’s what has happened to me. My implicit solution was to procrastinate until panic seized me, and then enjoy its temporary clarity of focus.

So, here’s a recipe for Todo Zero that will take an hour or two to start with:

Go through your todo list and pull out anything that’s going to take less than 10 minutes.

Pick out the one or two jobs that you really want to tackle – these should be the most important or urgent things on your list. Break them down into pieces that you could tackle today if you really put your mind to it, and note them down.

Schedule everything else as future events in your calendar (I usually just assign them to a date without a time). Give yourself enough room before the deadline to finish them without rushing. Don’t be over-optimistic about how many or how quickly you can work through them.

So, that leaves you with quick tasks that take less than 10 minutes, along with the one or two most urgent/important jobs for today.

Marvel at your wonderfully shortened todo list. Look away, take a deep breath. Do not look at your email. Make a coffee. Feel a little calmer than you did, and enjoy it.

Find any emails that are going to take less than 10 minutes to reply to, and boomerang them for 2 hours’ time.

Pull out one or two emails that are urgent or important, and boomerang them for 1 hour’s time.

If you have the energy, boomerang each of your remaining emails for future times individually (tomorrow, a week away or a month away, depending on urgency). If you don’t have the energy, just boomerang them wholesale for tomorrow morning.

Stand up, and take a deep breath. Walk around for a few minutes, and make a cup of coffee. This is going really well.

By the time you get back, you should be staring at a short todo list and a pretty clear inbox. [If anything new has landed, or any have boomeranged back, send them away for an hour. We need a clear head]

Now, let’s dispatch the less-than-ten-minute odds & ends tasks. Do some of them, most of them, all of them, it doesn’t matter. Just a few, to get back a sense of momentum.

Your most urgent emails have boomeranged back. Deal with them.

Take a break.

At this point, you’re close to the point where you have a clean slate, and just your important tasks. You probably have some meetings and stuff. Have lunch. Refresh.

Now, it’s time to tackle those one or two important high-priority tasks-for-today.

Picture yourself at the end of the day, leaning back in your chair with your hands knitted behind your head, smugly. For that to happen, double down on those one or two most important things, and the rest can wait. You will feel great.

With any luck, you made progress on those one or two most important tasks.

Armed with this approach, you can triage your own life. You can choose to focus on the most urgent or important things first, and ignore the rest. They’ll shamble back when their time has come, and then you can dispatch them in turn.

P.S. There are a few tools that will help:

Google Calendar – add a new ‘Todo’ calendar, whose notifications are set by default to email you at the time of the event.

P.P.S. One final note. I can’t juggle two balls, let alone six. So take that into account, seasoned with a pinch of salt, in reading this.

P.P.P.S. Of course, there is nothing that’s original here. It’s a death-metal-mashup of Inbox Zero and GTD. It’s not always feasible to work like this. If you don’t procrastinate, you probably don’t need it. Etc.